Parkland student activists Sofie Whitney and Ryan Deitsch visit Yale campus to speak about community organizing around the broader issue of a "culture of violence". Interview with Richard Hill, WPKN Radio producer (6:12) April 24, 2018

Three-part excerpts from Avi Chomsky's presentations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Day of Action on April 17. Includes a historical perspective as well as a question and answer session with immigrants. Recorded and produced by Chuck Rosina, long-time public affairs and news producer at WMBR FM, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's radio station in Cambridge, Massachusetts. April 17, 2018

Chuck Rosina's report on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Day of Action on April 17, where members of the MIT and broader local community were given an opportunity to devote the day to engaging with the political, economic, environmental and social challenges facing us today, through learning, discussion, reflection and planning for action. Includes comments from Avi Chomsky, daughter of the renowned professor Noam Chomsky (12:58) April 17, 2018

Tyler Suarez, lead organizer of the March for Our Lives demo in Hartford, CT on March 24, assesses the event attended by 10,000 and discusses the agenda for the youth movement going forward. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

Michael Zweig, economist and labor historian, unpacks the Supreme Court case Janus vs. AFSCME and
places it in the context of the history of American labor struggles since the 19th century. He also analyzes the extraordinary West Virginia teachers' strike and what it might portend for labor militancy going forward.

Zweig is professor emeritus at Stonybrook University, former director of the Center for the Study of Working
Class Life, and author of What's Class Got to Do With It? American Society in the Twenty-first Century)
Interviewed by Richard Hill. March 6, 2018.

Are private water companies free to bottle and export Connecticut's water?
Judy Allen, from Save Our Water Connecticut (SaveOurWaterct.org) explains the vulnerability of Connecticut's water to private interests and suggests remedies. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

Doria Robinson, executive director of Urban Tilth, a food justice project based in Richmond, California, describes her work creating a democratic food production and distribution network in that working class community. Doria argues that there can be no end to hunger and deprivation without a
radical economic transformation. Check out her work at urbantilth.org and foodfirst.org Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state.
Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

Lindsay Kanaly
The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT.
Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny,
discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live,
weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines'
interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m.
EDT at www.WPKN.org
(Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET
Monday nights,
and is available for at least a year following broadcast in
WPKN Radio's Archives.

Stay connected to BTL

This Week on Between The Lines

Posted Nov. 2, 2016 for week ending Nov. 11, 2016

"The FBI is creating a massive biometric database called Next Generation Identification and they're getting access to biometric data with states ... photo IDs ... fingerprints, iris scans and all sorts of very sci-fi sort of bits of our body."

– Sue Udry, executive director of the Defending Dissent Foundation, on scale of government surveillance and the need for broader reform

Listen to the entire program using these links, or to individual
interviews via the links appearing prior to each segment description
below.

After former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden publicly revealed details about U.S. spy agencies’ dragnet surveillance American’s communications, there was a push to enact reforms by both citizens and legislators. The USA Freedom Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama on June 2, 2015, mandates that telecommunications companies, not the government, will store phone metadata. The legislation also demands increased transparency from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA Court, which has been criticized as a rubber stamp in approving government access to personal phone data. Under the new law, FISA Court judges will be allowed to, but not required, to appoint a “friend of the court” to argue on behalf of privacy concerns.
Story continues

Interview with Matt Wood, policy director of the media democracy group FreePress.net, conducted by Scott Harris

In the march toward ever greater concentration of media ownership in the U.S., telecommunications colossus AT&T announced on Oct. 22 that it reached a deal to buy media giant Time Warner for $85.4 billion. This proposed mega-merger comes after Comcast’s buyout of NBCUniversal for $30 billion and Verizon Communications’ purchase of Yahoo and the Huffington Post.
Story continues

Last July a Yale University dining hall worker smashed a window depicting slaves harvesting cotton in the residential college where he worked, declaring he was tired of seeing the "extremely degrading" image. The name of that residential college – Yale's equivalent of a dormitory – is Calhoun, named for John C. Calhoun, a U.S. senator from South Carolina and later vice president of the U.S. who was one of the South's strongest proponents of slavery and white supremacy. Calhoun was also a Yale graduate.
Story continues

Before the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling in 2010, multimillionaire Art Pope played a big behind the scenes role in the rightward drift of the North Carolina Republican Party. But once Republicans won a legislative majority in 2010, Pope has been in the driver’s seat. Under Governor Pat McCrory, Pope briefly served as budget director and succeeded in implementing savage budget cuts in education and welfare programs.("Inside the Knock-Down, Drag-Out Fight to Turn North Carolina Blue," Mother Jones, November/December, 2016)

Once again, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, appeared to be in trouble with the announcement that health premiums could spike 20 percent in the coming year. At the same time, there are signs of real progress such as the quarter million Louisiana citizens who signed up for Medicaid, after the state expanded the program under Obamacare.("How Clinton Can Put Health-Care Reform Back on Track," American Prospect, Oct. 17, 2016)